Wednesday, February 23, 2011

The #Internet as a battle field

It is not only #Anonymous who is campaigning on the Internet even countries like Iran are engaged in making the Internet in their image. The activities of Anonymous are illegal and the activities of Iran are illegal under the same laws. However the Iranians are unlikely to suffer the consequences under those laws.

With the turmoil in the Arabic world, the Internet is a tool that enables or denies people to be informed, to communicate and to organise. In countries like Australia and New Zealand much of the infrastructure is broken because of natural causes and the results are not dissimilar.

Iranian propaganda .. its language is a joke

When the Internet is broken, connectivity to essential resources cannot be relied upon. In Egypt and Libya the infrastructure was switched off while in Australia and New Zealand much of the infrastructure is broken.

When the Internet consists of mesh networks, software in such networks can pick up the slack. This means that the software from Status.net will continue to work while twitter will be dead.

When Eben Moglen promotes the FreedomBox, he does not address this utility. The FreedomBox will be useful to organise and communicate whenever a disaster strikes and they work optimally with mesh enabled functionality.
Thanks,
GerardM